


stars shine for you

by iamyouropus (adieu_sweetamaryllis)



Series: every beat of your heart is one less i've got [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 08:30:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5368514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adieu_sweetamaryllis/pseuds/iamyouropus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he first changes, Clara doesn't think she knows who the Doctor is anymore. </p><p>The Doctor had shown up on her doorstep, befriended her, saved her, seemingly <em>adored</em> her, and then abandoned her only to save her once more, one final time. They had been through so much, and now he doesn’t even know her <em>name?</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	stars shine for you

He didn’t give her time to get angry.

Or he did, or he must have, because she was so angry, but rather he didn’t give her the time to get over it. One second she was cooking a Christmas turkey and the next her friend was waiting for his death, standing as one man against a million monsters in the sky. He’d left her, twice, and she barely got a minute to be angry about it.  
And then he changed. 

//

Vastra doesn’t think much of her, and that’s fine. She doesn’t need her to. What she needs is to understand. 

Who is he? 

The Doctor had shown up on her doorstep, befriended her, saved her, seemingly adored her, and then abandoned her only to save her once more, one final time. They’d been through so much, and now he doesn’t even know her name?

And she doesn’t know his. He isn’t the Doctor anymore.

She’s isn’t okay with that, but somehow the Silurian doesn’t understand her predicament. She thinks Clara isn’t worthy of the Doctor, and maybe that’s true. But she’d been trapped in a time travel machine with a man who couldn’t fly it and had been eaten by a tyrannosaurus rex for god’s sake; doesn’t she get a minute to process? 

Not according to Madame Vastra. 

But Clara has seen the Doctor so many times in so many forms, and even just from those glimpses she could tell it was him. This man? 

It’s not him. 

The Doctor is gone.

//

“I don’t think I know who the Doctor is anymore,” she admits to Vastra. The woman’s eyes barely have time to darken before the telltale whirring of the Tardis’s arrival starts ringing through the air.

Vastra smiles. “It would seem, my dear, that you are very wrong about that.” 

She can’t help the smile that forms on her face. He had saved the day. He had come back for her. She could give this a chance, right? 

She pauses outside the Tardis, the grin suddenly falling from her face. It’s nerves, she knows, but she can’t quite identify the source. She takes her time as she enters the Tardis. It looks different. It’s not bad, but she tells him she doesn’t like it anyway. 

The buzzing nerves flowing through her veins speed up as his voice turns dark. He stands, making his way towards her. She eyes him warily, unsure how to proceed.

“I’ve made many mistakes, and it’s about time I did something about that,” he says, and then pauses. Her heart beat is shallow and quick against her ribcage. Her eyes search his, finding little familiarity there, and he continues. “Clara, I’m not your boyfriend,”

“I never thought you were,” she is quick to reply, her brow furrowing.

And it’s true — he wasn’t her boyfriend, even if she had wanted him to be. He was impossible and beautiful, her Doctor, and she knew that he would never be able to return her feelings, not really. She was just a blink in time to him, after all. 

“I never said it was your mistake,” he admits, softly, and then spins on his heel.

Her eyes follow him, and she wills away the tears gathering there. He had liked her then, was that it? Could he still?  

She can’t will herself to ask.

Instead, she lets him change the subject. 

“There’s a woman out there who is very keen that we stay together,” he says, just as the Tardis thuds to a land. “How do you feel on the subject?” 

She stares at the screen for just a moment too long.

She can’t stay with him. She had promised herself that she was going to try after her talk with Vastra, but she can’t. 

He was rude. It’s really the least of her problems, but it sticks out like a sore thumb. He insulted her, and sure, he could have been joking, but if he was he has atrocious comedic timing. This wasn’t the time for jokes, how could he not see that? If he was still the same man, how could he not care or to try to comfort her? At the very least, he could stop with the jabs. She is  _not_ a control freak. 

He flashes her a charming smile, a latch-ditch effort after her sees her staring longingly at the screen showing her her home, so she breaks it to him as gently as she can.

She just can’t stay.

She’s, so so sorry.

Yes, he’d saved the day, but he’d left her behind. Again. He came to her rescue, as always, but she knew from the moment the door came down between them that she couldn’t do this anymore. It hurt too much. The man she had known was gone, and she would never get to see him again.

She hears the Doctor as she walks through the halls, her lungs on fire. She closes her eyes because it hurts to hear his voice, now replaced with a gruff Scottish accent. 

He saves her after all, but it’s too late. She’s made up her mind. 

She’s surprised by the brief flash of hurt on his face. He doesn’t argue, at least not right away, and the silence is interrupted by a phone call.

Thank god, she thinks as she glances down at her phone. She doesn’t recognize the number, but she moves to go outside anyway. The air is too thick in the space between them, and her lungs are still aching from before.

It’s him. 

“Why?” she asks him. It isn’t fair, after all. He’d left her once, twice, and then for good. Now she’s reliving it, all over again, another goodbye she is nowhere near equipped to handle. “Why would you do this?”  

“He needs you.” 

She stays.

//

He brings her coffee. 

It’s three weeks late, but he brings it anyway. 

She follows him into the Tardis. He seems on edge.

“Right, what is it?” she says when he tells her he needs the truth. She’s ready for whatever he has to ask, she thinks. That is, until she sees his face. It’s the first time she’s been able to read him, and her heart skips a beat.

“You’re scared?” she asks in a markedly softer tone. 

He asks her his question.

“Am I a good man?” She can’t possibly answer. She tells him as much, and he doesn’t seem surprised. 

Even so, there is an awkward air between them. She makes to leave, but he stops her. 

“I need you,” he says, and it’s not fair because he knows that that will get her, using his words on the phone, and she doesn’t stand a chance. 

She stays.

//

He brings her into an impossibly dangerous situation, and she doesn’t know if she’s angry at him for it or happy he’s not dancing on eggshells around her.

She quickly decides its the latter — they’re inside a Dalek, for gods-sake — and then he does something unthinkable. He condemns an entire species, and it shocks her despite the fact that she knew deep down this wasn't the same man she had traveled with before. 

She slaps him. She never thought she’d want to do that, not that hard, not that angrily, but she did. 

He's so busy being happy that he’s been proven right that he doesn't seem to care that they're about to die. He’s brought her to her death and he was smirking. 

And since when was the Doctor willing to declare a whole species devoid of anything good? 

He’s not the same. She knows it, but it still hurts a little each time she’s reminded. 

He listens, at least, his eyes softening as he thanks her in his own way, and she feels a little better. 

She doesn’t know how he does it, but he saves the day. 

He brings her home. When he drops her off, he teases her but it’s not like before, and he even compliments her in the end.

She smiles and it feels real for the first time in a while.   
   
//

They continue for a few weeks, and it’s okay. Not great, but not awful either, and she thinks there’s a chance she can get used to it. 

“Underneath it all, he isn’t really like that,” she says to Psi after he has a particularly bad episode.

His back is to her, walking away, and she prays he can’t hear. She’s holding out hope that this was all a facade, and he might shatter it if he knew. 

"You’re really good at the excuses."

Psi’s words ring in her mind for days to come. 

But in the end it’s fun. He’d done something good, great even, and it's a step towards confirming that underneath it all, buried deep, is somehow the man she’d traveled the universe with, like Vastra said. 

They eat food and laugh with Psi and Saibra and it feels normal. It feels like old times, even better maybe, and she can’t help the blush on her cheeks when she leaves the Tardis. As she gets to know his new face she’s beginning to learn its subtleties, and she noticed a new one just then: flirting. 

//

He’s jealous of Danny, and it’s just ridiculous. He has no right. When he first changed, he’d told her that he wasn’t her boyfriend, and that had been that. She could accept it. What had hurt worse was his admittance afterwards, that he had been the one confused. 

Are you still? The question hung between them, but after a second he turned away. Changed the subject. She shook it off, never to bring it up again. She wishes she could change it, could have some closure, but even time travel couldn’t help her here.

She sneaks Danny into the Tardis, and she knows its wrong.

She can tell the moment he figures it out, watches as his eyes darken and he starts to insist on running away, making sure to mention how often they cut out in the middle of her dates.

It's cruel in a way she wasn't expecting from him, and she frowns. Jealous isn't a good look on him. 

Danny is harsh. Danny thinks he knows the size of the man in front of him, and Clara isn’t sure. She has to go after Danny. 

She leaves.

// 

She shouldn’t have gone with him again. She should have known, should have listened to her gut when it told her that he was not the same man, not her friend anymore. But Vastra’s words, his words just kept coming back to haunt her and now she’s paying for it.

He left her on the moon. 

It was supposed to be a grand gesture, she thinks. He was showing off, bringing Courtney to the moon when he could have just told her she was worth something. Clara argues, insists they stay on Earth, but he doesn’t listen. He’s been doing a lot of that lately. 

He still thinks he’s done something grand when they return. God, he can be thick. That’s not new, and the bit of familiarity makes her feel sick. 

I’m sorry Clara, I can’t help you. 

She cried when he turned his back. It felt so stupid but she cried, and she’d called him and he didn’t respond.

Because it’s not his name. She’s sure now. She’d called for him and he hadn't turned around, just got into his Tardis and left her.

She tries to do the same as she leaves for what feels like the last time, but she can’t help herself. He calls her, his voice betraying more emotion than it had the entire time they’d traveled as this new duo. She can’t help but turn, but she isn’t about to back down now.

You go a long way away, she tells him.

And then, she leaves.

//

Tell him when you’re calm. 

Danny’s advice had seemed so practical. 

She wishes she had never taken it. It takes her nearly a week to call him, and she’d been hoping the entire time the phone rang that he wouldn’t pick up. He did.

He was civil, in an odd way. Nothing in his tone implied that he recalled their fight, and god knows how long ago that was for him, honestly. But at the same time he was reserved, polite. It made her uneasy. 

A last hurrah, they decide to call it. He has a dress picked out for her and everything. He’d shown up in the middle of the night, in her apartment, something he hadn’t done in a long time. 

He takes her to a beautiful moment in time, or so she thinks for the first few minutes they’re there. Of course, everything goes wrong soon enough, but that’s just life with the Doctor. Or it was, anyway. It won’t be, anymore. 

Everything about this feels wrong. She’s conflicted, and even her smiles seem sad.

He sees it in her and challenges her on it, but she backs down. 

Sorry, she says, and he frowns. Maybe he wants her to fight, but she doesn’t have it in her anymore. She can’t spend her life fighting him, fighting for him. 

It’s a good choice, she tells him. A good one to end on. 

And then, of course, everything goes wrong.

She follows Ms. Pitt down a hallway because she’s clutching a shoe. It’s a silly reason to follow someone, she realizes later, but it made sense at the time. She ends up trapped in a room with Maisie, who is very upset about the death of her grandmother and perhaps a bit unhinged — thus the shoe — but for none of the reasons Clara is expecting.

“Difficult people, they can make you feel all sorts of things,” Clara explains. 

They begin talking, then, and are fast friends. That’s one of the things she’s going to miss about traveling. She had met so many people that she would never have met, made so many friends that would have been strangers, born hundreds of years in the past or the future on planets she will never visit again. 

Clara doesn’t know how they end up talking about her and her troubles. Maisie’s grandmother had died in front of her just hours before, after all, and they probably should be focusing on more important matters at hand more pressing than Clara’s current predicament with the time lord, like maybe the sarcophagus sitting in the corner. 

“Life would be so much simpler if you liked the right people,” Maisie notes. 

Clara frowns, because that problem isn’t liking him, really. It is more of a need, like he and his big blue box are something she can’t live without. Each week, she finds herself excited for the sound that signals the Tardis landing, signaling his arrival. She doesn’t know how she’ll feel next Wednesday, when no such noise ever comes.

She would never hear it again.

It’s not a choice she makes easily, but she knows in her heart it is right. After all, how can she stay with a man that would abandon her on the moon?

The Doctor is not her friend. Not anymore. 

She insists. It doesn't sound real, even to her ears. But it feels real, even more so a few minutes later when he asks her to lie and lead a woman she had just met to her death. 

She’s made the right choice, she's sure more now than ever. She needs to leave, to move on. There’s nothing left for her here.

“This is why I’m leaving you,” she tells him, and his eyes narrow at her words. She doesn’t stop, just keeps digging. 

And sure enough, the mummy comes for Maisie. He’s going to let her die. She wishes she’d never taken one last trip with him. 

And then he does something she would have seen coming from a mile away had it been her doctor. She feels so stupid, because she’d discounted him again as she’d done time after time since he’d changed.

He'd asked her if he was a good man. She still doesn’t know how to feel on the subject, but she promised herself she would be optimistic. 

She let herself get caught up in negativity. It wasn’t hard, of course, since she’d been literally abandoned by the man. She’d yelled. He’s seconds from an invisible death and her last words to him were cross. She feels sick. 

He figures it out with barely a moment to spare. 

Her heart feels like it’s just about stopped in its cage, and it stays that way just a moment too long to be comfortable. It returns hard and thudding against her chest.

She wakes up on a beach. She can’t help but how she got there, with a blanket wrapped around her. She tries not to imagine him carrying him, wrapping her up and keeping her warm, tries not to notice the abandoned blanket next to her. 

“You saved everyone,” she notes. “So, you were pretending to be heartless?” 

He doesn’t give her a real answer. 

“Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones, but you still have to choose,” he says, and it resonates with her. 

She’s faced with two bad choices. Continue with him, risk her life and probably her heart with a man that she no longer really understood. Or leave, lose the stars and the planets and the people and him. 

“Is it like an addiction?” she asks. 

“You can’t really tell if something is an addiction until you try to give it up,” he says. 

“And you never have?” she asks.

“Let me know how it goes.”

Clara tells herself she’s still running off adrenaline when she tells him she’ll stay with him.

She lies. She says Danny doesn’t care. And true, he was the one who encouraged her to come back out for one ‘last hurrah’ but this probably wasn’t what he had in mind.

“It was his idea that we stop,” she says. He doesn’t question it even though it is so see-through. Danny had told him to clear off, had he? 

“That’s a big change of heart,” is all he says, willing to accept whatever she says if it means that she’s staying. “Seriously?” He smiles, and she can’t help but return it. He doesn’t stop, and she can’t help the feeling that swells in her chest knowing that she put it there. 

Maybe she is addicted. It’s sick, in a way, but she doesn’t want to think about that. She doesn’t want to think about Danny at home, or the Doctor she’d lost.

She wants to think about the stars, and the only man she knows who can take her there. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to follow me on Tumblr (@ aka-patsywalker), feel free. Thanks for reading!


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